


Like a Pink Puff of Seafoam

by Suzume



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Community: intoabar, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, District 4, Gen, Swimming, Swimming Pools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-22 23:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/pseuds/Suzume
Summary: Mags goes into her natatorium and meets...  Madoka Kaname, young and eager to learn.  (Homura follows about a week later)





	Like a Pink Puff of Seafoam

Mags knew why Madoka Kaname had joined up at the Club after the birth of a much younger brother- this often happened in such cases- a certain sense of anxiety about a sibling you wouldn’t have been able to protect anyway… Maybe it was better to just volunteer and get it over with. For two siblings from the same family to be randomly selected would be absolute nonsense- and if you hailed from one of the district’s better-off families, you probably hadn’t taken out any tessera, and neither of your names would be called anyway. And if you had been born into a poorer family, someone from the Club would undoubtedly take their chance to jump up and volunteer for you, assuming you weren’t a Club member yourself.  


* * *

  
About a week after Madoka officially signed up, Homura Akemi followed her. Mags was fairly sure that Madoka and Homura were in her classes to mutually look out for one another. They were still too young for either of them to be called, only ten years old, but it was better to start sooner than later.

  
Madoka was a stronger swimmer, an easy enough quality to determine in these days and place. However, Homura, for all her thick glasses and puffy braids, harbored a certain fierceness beneath that gentle facade. …Who had her parents been before she had wound up in the orphanage? Somehow, Mags couldn’t quite recall…

  
This might be an early signal toward dementia or other memory-related matters. She couldn’t say it was anything she liked. There was a considerable amount of information that might slip from her brain regarding Odysseus Armain and all his adopted siblings (somehow Jules Surfjan and his circumstances were just ironed in deeper; being that he was the son of her closest friend after all?).

  
Madoka popped her head out of the nearest end of the indoor pool and pulled in a deep breath. She bobbed up and down there, probably just waiting for Homura to join her. “Ms. Mags, are you okay?”

  
“I’m quite fine, dear.” Mags composed herself even as Madoka’s fingers drifted across the bottoms of her feet dipping into the pool.

  
“Oh,” Madoka let slip a measure of her surprise, for all she quickly stifled the sound. There was a scar, plenty distinctive enough, related to shark teeth that had torn into her foot however many dozen years ago (How old was Mags? Certainly one of the oldest people in the district- and she was at least a handful of years older than Ms. Faline…).

  
After that awkward pause, Homura came up, nose first, beside Madoka, and coughed out a squirt of water. Even if she were upwards of seventy now, Mags wasn’t quite worried about her chances if Homura pulled her into the pool. She was, like Madoka, certainly better in the water than on the rumbling, rolling, always-something-to-trip-over land. A person weighed considerably less in the water and wasn’t having to put it all on her joints.

  
Jules had gifted her a long stick of driftwood to make use of as a cane, but sometimes it bothered her a little. It wasn’t age catching up to her too soon- it was a mere reviving of that old, old wound. One day she had stepped on something sharp in an unfortunate spot and that teenaged pain came swelling back in full force.

  
“Oh, Ms. Mags!” Madoka squeaked, seeing her heading away from the pool, “Let me help you!” It took a longer to pull herself out of the water with just her arms, but she could manage it Just as two young men also in the pool moved Mags’ way.

  
“Mags, wait!” One of them called. Madoka didn’t remember his name, but recognized him as the head of his (several years older) class with his bright green eyes. It seemed practically impossible to imagine him deciding not to volunteer when the time was right- and, honestly, if not before that just to garner some extra fame. He would unashamedly eat it all up.

  
Though Homura was weaker in the water, she was up on the deck second. She smiled slightly up at Mags. Height was another thing that Mags didn’t have on her side, but at ten-years-old, she should have that much on the girls at least. “I’m in good hands, Finnick,” she assured him.

  
Finnick didn’t quite roll his eyes, but it couldn’t be entirely judged as a separate gesture. Then he smiled brightly and hopped back in the pool. “No horseplay in the indoor pool,” Mags reminded him and the boys he was rejoining, “You have to come out into the real ocean for that.”

  
“Yes, Mom,” he quipped in return and then blushed awkwardly, realizing what he had said. Some of the other boys snickered.

  
Madoka and Homura were drying off as they steadied Mags and her cane while managing to not get in her way- a somewhat more difficult trip than it appeared to the casual observer.

  
“Is this okay, Ms. Mags?” Madoka inquired as they reached the nearest door to the natatorium.

  
“Yes, it’s absolutely fine,” Mags agreed and detached herself from both her “hosts.” Madoka nodded her strawberry-pink head and Homura tipped hers just enough to make a black braid fall over one shoulder. She was skinnier then Mags been able to see through the pool water. …Maybe some of the community homes could use an extra loaf or two… Many of them were formed around some underground priest or sister who could manage to support a child or two via their day job, but even in one of the questionably-better-off districts (which did include Four), that wasn’t exactly a promising situation…

* * *

  
  
Mags happened to see them from time to time throughout the years as the two girls stayed together in one of the lower classes, but she hadn’t really pegged either of them as a real stand-outs of their year. Homura’s body had filled out somewhat. Outside of training, she wasn’t tying back her hair, but merely pushing it back with a headband.

  
Mags felt an unexpected kinship with Madoka and her relatively undeveloped form at something around age 14. From this point on there wasn’t likely to be much further bodily development. Having a small chest could be a blessing or a curse, Mags supposed, considering what any given person wanted out of life? Madoka seemed very young with her pink pigtails and yellow sundress, standing among the rest of her cohort.

  
Then again, Mags imagined, she must have looked relatively young and weak when Faline’s name had been called and she had volunteered almost off the cuff. With repeated memories of that day, the more foolish it seemed. Thinking back to her own calling out and taking Faline’s place on Reaping Day, took her back through dozens of years of sitting in the Victors’ Box (…which had once been a single white folding chair until Tyde joined her and needed somewhere to lean his still singed and sensitive feet).

  
Mags shook her head and allowed her eyes to run numbly along rows and rows of boys and girls, some she knew vaguely and others she was personally rather acquainted with. To some of the ones who seemed more inclined to it, she taught a very simple gesture- a thumbs-up, which Perch Tyler shot her from within the quiet ranks of the 18s.

  
It was true- the higher end of the age-rankings weren’t quite as likely to be eaten up by the Games as earlier years were, but that was only because someone was actively volunteering for younger District Four citizens. …and, to the best of Mags’ knowledge, Perch Tyler was not one of these designated ‘hitters,’ just a lazy goofball as far Club matters were concerned. In the old days, when Mags only barely started up the Club, the likeliest volunteers used to be identified by a turquoise piece of jewelry, but now there was no marker separating them from the rest of citizens of their district and year. ...Almost as if even thinking too deeply about the pre-arena situation put them out of joint.

* * *

  
  
However, there had been volunteering failures before, and if the Capitol wanted more of them, they were probably going to get them more “frequently.” It didn’t take long for Mags to realize she had drowsed a long-ish portion of the latest mayor’s pre-taped speech from decades ago when Caroline’d gone in for the job.

  
They went back and forth these years between calling the female and male tribute first.

  
Apparently, it was female first this time, because before the last “-ka” was out of the escort’s lips, Homura had thrown herself forward, black and blazing. “I volunteer!”

  
“I guess you look a bit more outgoing than your pink-haired friend there,” the escort mused cheerfully, “But it’s going to be harder than usual to maintain a back-to-back situation with Mr. Finnick Odair.”

  
“Harder for the male tribute, I suppose,” Homura shrugged, standing as tall and erect as she could in her any number of hand-me-downs black dress and flat shoes. “Madoka.” She dramatically reached out her hand toward her shivering friend. “I promise I will come back to you.”


End file.
